Tag: Cambodia

Injustice doesn’t have the same meaning for the average reader of this site as it does for a child who has grown up in precarious conditions, subjected to racism, a lack of emotional education and cultural training.

Former British ambassador to the United States Sir Christopher Meyer is advocating that the U.S. and Western Europe stop advocating the overthrow of the Baath regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and instead coordinate with it to move against the so-called Islamic State.

Chris Hedges delivered this address Saturday in New York City before demonstrators marched to U.N. headquarters in support of the people of Gaza. The event was part of a day of international protest against the Israeli military assault on Palestinians.

Fred Branfman was in Laos when the U.S. began covertly dropping bombs on the country’s civilian population in 1969 as part of its military operations in neighboring Vietnam. Today, he writes about the Obama administration’s international counterterrorism plan, which involves 60,000 Special Operations forces worldwide. (more)

I heard a brilliant young Harvard scholar, influential in the Obama administration, explain that the future of successful American action in Central Asia lies in a “surge” of civilian political and developmental action to rescue the people of the region from their present backwardness.

A local festival took a fatal turn in Cambodia on Monday night, when a stampede occurred after panic broke out among a crowd packed onto a bridge, causing dozens to be trampled or flung off the side. Updated

He was involved in the torture and killing of more than a million people over the course of four years, but key Khmer Rouge operative Kaing Guek Eav, aka “Duch,” got off easy as he was sentenced by a U.N.-affiliated court Monday.

Here’s some good news: The White House is currently in a “vigorous debate” over whether or not to sign the Ottawa Treaty, an international agreement to ban land mines, as pressure from Capitol Hill and NGOs pushes the administration to reconsider the country’s decade-old refusal to sign.

Washington once again finds itself dangerously entangled with the hostile policies, nationalistic interests and supporters, and personal ambitions of a foreign figure whom it counted on to serve American interests.

The U.S. government is cracking down on American sex tourists who take trips to Cambodia to molest minors, an unfortunately common phenomenon in that country, with the new “Twisted Traveler” international law-enforcement initiative—and three U.S. citizens just became the first to find out what the changes mean for those who get caught.

It was the stark evil Robert McNamara perpetrated as secretary of defense that must indelibly frame our memory of him. To not speak out fully because of respect for the deceased would be to mock the memory of the millions he caused to be maimed and killed in a war that he later freely admitted never made any sense.

Last September, during the American presidential campaign, I wrote a column declaring that the United States had again invaded Cambodia, only this time “Cambodia” was Pakistan. President George W. Bush had ordered U.S. ground attacks on the Taliban inside Pakistan’s Tribal Territories, without Pakistan’s authorization.

Thousands of Cambodians were tortured and killed under Pol Pot’s horrific Khmer Rouge regime, and now one of the major players from that reign of torture and terror, Kang Khek Ieu, may face justice for his role in the deaths of about 17,000 people. Here, The Independent’s Valerio Pellizzari hears the firsthand account during a rare interview with the man formerly known as “Duch.”

Kang Kek Ieu, otherwise known as Duch, the first of a group of former Khmer Rouge leaders to be investigated by a U.N.-affiliated tribunal in Cambodia, has been charged with crimes against humanity, according to the BBC.

A woman in Cambodia walked out of the jungle a week ago, making odd grunting noises and walking like a monkey. From a scar on her arm, one family has claimed her as its own, saying she ran away 19 years ago. But skeptics abound, and her inability to speak is no help in solving the mystery.